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Useful Photography Tip

These are the Best Lenses for Night Photography

Chris Gampat
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Last updated on 07/11/2025
07/14/2025
2 Mins read
A person with a camera stands by neon DIRTY signs glowing pink in a dark urban setting.
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You’d probably think that any lens with a fast aperture is great for night photography, right? Well, you’re not wrong. Some lenses are objectively better than others if you don’t plan on bringing a tripod with you. And most people who own cameras don’t ever plan on bringing a tripod of some sort with them. Instead, they opt to do everything handheld to keep things light. Most importantly, they’re often going to reach for a small prime lens. Lucky for us, even telephoto lenses can be small these days. But wide-angle lenses are the absolute best for night photography.

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Here are the reasons why wide-angle lenses are what a photographer should reach for for night photography:

  • The laws of physics: The wider the lens, the slower you can shoot at a given focal length. Without image stabilization, you’d have to shoot at 1/50th at a minimum to ensure a 50mm lens gets a blur-free photo when doing night photography with a full-frame camera. But if you want to get more creative, you’ve got the option to do so with a slower shutter speed. Luckily, pretty much every camera these days that uses interchangeable lenses has image stabilization of some sort.
  • Lightweight: Wide-angle lenses with fast apertures tend to be lighter and easier to hold. That means that you’re less likely to shake around if you’re practicing good form when shooting photos.
  • Faster autofocus: A wide-angle lens can autofocus so much faster than a telephoto lens can. So you’re far less likely to miss the shot. Autofocus in general tends to struggle in low light. And if you’re doing night photography, it’s much better to give your camera every advantage that you can. I mean, there’s a great reason why we don’t have all that many images of wildlife at night. Considering that many photographers shoot in continuous autofocus at all times, they won’t make the camera work too hard. But for the absolute best performance, shoot in Single-AF mode. It will mean that your camera isn’t constantly working.
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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